MagiStream

It Ain't What it's Cracked Up To Be...

Immortality. The Scourge of Man. That one thing every man seemed to want, and yet...and yet. It wasn't what it was cracked up to be, he had to admit. He'd struck the deal without thinking. And now...and now...
He'd thought being brought back from the dead would be easy. Rule his empire for centuries, conquer Europe, teach those bloody English a lesson! But nothing is ever simple, as his mother had told him many times...His current situation certainly didn't fall under what he would call 'simple,' that was for sure.
He glanced sideways at the other tactics professor at the academy, who sent him a short glare before moving his eyes pointedly to the paperwork sitting on his desk, untouched. Student work that needed grading, young officers eager for advancement...Some things, he reminded himself, really never changed.
“Arthur...ever think maybe we did the wrong thing? I mean, with the whole immortality deal?”
The other man sighed in frustration, and stood up abruptly from his desk, striding to the window and staring out at the French town they called home. Then, he spoke, his Irish lilt soft but still sounding frustrated and annoyed with his friend.
“We help teach the next generations, Napoleon. And by God, some of them really need our help...any help. Now, can we get back to work?”
Napoleon Bonaparte, first Emperor of France, rolled his eyes and joined his friend at the window, chuckling softly as he shook his head in a friendly hopelessness.
“Oh, come now Arthur, we're on vacation! We have another three days of vacation!”
Arthur Wellesley shook his head and glared down at his old friend, and finally snorted with a friendly disdain for his friend's love of extravagance. Napoleon just shook his head and remained at the window as Arthur returned to his desk.
“You know, if we just get it done, we can have two free days of vacation with no work at all, and then I'll let you drag me to any den of extravagance you care to- ”
He cut off as Napoleon was suddenly in his desk-chair, comparing the essays they had on their desks to the rubric he had beside him. Arthur smiled faintly.
“-name.”
A few more hours went by, and the sun set. One thing they both agreed was very useful about being immortal, was the ability to see technology roll on. The electric lights were certainly a large boon, and they now scribbled comments and grades with quill pens in the white LED light. They didn't get to sleep until late in the night, though Napoleon noted with some annoyance the next morning that the other bed was empty by sunrise, and he smelled what he assumed to be chicken cooking in the electric oven.

The war was not what they expected. They'd seen the signs, of course, experienced generals couldn't miss them, but they hadn’t expected the airplanes, or the trenches...neither wished they had thought of the latter to the degree that both sides now did.
But the airplanes! Napoleon could only imagine what a younger, far more ambitious him would have done with those marvelous machines. He wasn't sure whether Arthur's amused snorts were because the man could still do better than him at strategy (sometimes...), or because he found the idea of their minds applied to the sky so preposterous. Arthur never seemed inclined to enlighten him.
But neither of them actually expected the Germans to come so close to their little home, and especially not in force. Not like that.

“Napoléon! Obtenez votre tête vers le bas!” (“Napoleon! Get your head down!”)
The Corsican immediately ducked, and felt the bullet dig into the trench where his head had been. At 5'6”, it was usually unlikely anything would hit him. And usually, Old Nosey was not the man to tell him to duck, standing at least six inches taller. Still, he darted his way through the mud to his companion, and reloaded his gun, deciding that maybe the Irishman's attention to detail was a good thing to have nearby.
“You realize I'd just come back if it hit me, right?”
Arthur smiled, and sat down on a stool in the trench, nodding to a passing Scotsman before he shrugged, smiling faintly at his old companion.
“It's harder to explain you coming back than it is to just save you the trouble.
Napoleon rolled his eyes and sat beside his friend, watching as some of their students were guided out the back of the trench, hopefully to escape to England.
“How many, you think?” Napoleon asked quietly. He saw the Duke's features got tense, then the sorrow come into the Irishman’s face.
“Too many...the last time I ought in a war this bad-”
“-It was us,” Napoleon finished softly, and they shook their heads as the gunshots went on around them. Sure, there were a couple of days or hours without shots fired, but you never poked your head up unless you had to. The best snipers were also good duckers.
“I could use a good 24-pounder right now.”
The Corsican glanced up at the Irishman, who was smirking slightly. After a moment, Napoleon was too.
“Let's run it by the Colonel, else he'll kill us with the regulations we broke...and you're right, much harder to explain coming back from the dead these days.”
They ducked down and started the thirty foot run that they had to make to get to the tent of the Colonel. He was a young man, a bit new, shiny and idealistic still...and very far out of his league. He looked to his older enlisted and the older officers equally for help, which had earned him the love of his men if not their complete respect.
Currently, the boy was leaning over a map in a deeper part of the trench, enabling even Arthur to stand upright without risking getting his head shot off. He still instinctively ducked his head, just in case.
“Colonel? We have a suggestion.”
The boy glanced up from his map, and glanced at the empty circle around his tent and table. Then he glanced up at the edge of the trench, before looking back at them.
“They're less than ten feet away now! I'll take whatever you can give me, provided it is feasible and not a suicide run.”
The pair glanced at each other, and shrugged.
“For none but us. You said we had an excess of TNT? We would like to discreetly dig a bit further towards their trench at the end of one of ours, and lob it over from there, the other side, and the middle, hopefully bringing the bloody mongrels out of their trenches and up to the top to avoid being killed by TNT!”
Arthur smoothly cut in when the colonel started looking at Napoleon oddly, as his voice had taken on a sort of gleeful edge.
“Of course, either way, many of them will die, and we can then perhaps storm then and take the trench without too much trouble.”
After a brief moment, the colonel nodded, and Napoleon grinned happily. Of all the devices he'd seen developed the last one hundred years, he had really fallen in love with TNT. Arthur, on the other hand, seemed entirely obsessed with mines and grenades.
“Ah yes, and could we perhaps get one or two grenades as well? The shrapnel will kill more, if we're lucky.”
“Yes, alright, alright. Just...get going, quickly! It will take at least a day to dig that extension of yours, and we may not have that much time.”
Arthur Westin and Napoleon Bellerose nodded and then ducked down again as they made their way to the side closest to the German trenches. As they did, they grabbed the best diggers, and then grabbed shovels themselves.
“What you think, six hours, tops?”
“Maybe five if we don't eat.”
They smiled at each other, and began to dig. A cautious, quiet, but quick motion that used small increments but made lots of progress quickly due to speed. It wasn't that they hadn’t had men dig trenches back in the Peninsular War. It just wasn't quite like this.
Five hours later, there was a thin wall of about three feet between them and the Germans, and they had their TNT ready. Now, they only had to wait another twelve hours, for the Germans to be asleep, and give them an opening...
They won the battle, but lost the war. Well, to them it was losing. Fighting in the French Resistance wasn't the same thing as keeping France from being conquered. Few in the hierarchy listened to an Irishman and an Corsican, and their moment of victory became one point in a long and brutal war. And when it ended, they moved on to England, hoping that perhaps there merit would be rewarded...and besides, they'd lived in France for fifty-some years, it was really time they gave England a shot, wasn't it? To be fair?

Napoleon sat in his chair at his desk in London, waiting for Arthur to get back from the War Office. The Blitz was depressing...even he, a dedicated Corsican who hated most things English, even he had to admit that seeing those ancient and beautiful buildings burn was a sight he never wanted to see again. But life carried on, and he found a new respect for the English people as they forced themselves to carry on. The British Way, they called it. Going on when it seemed your life was crumbling, just to save face to your neighbors, or the world. The British Empire Carried On, and that was, inexplicably, that.
Now, however, he was spinning a coin on the desk – he wasn't sure which type of coin, but it was big- as he waited for his friend to return with the papers they needed to fill out for the men at the front. After all, they really didn't need to do much more than make sure those men had food and the supplies of war, right? Except, they'd done this all before, as generals...now, they were little more than clerks with commissions, and they were mostly honorary, when you got right down to-
The whistling of a bomb made Napoleon glance out the window, and he sighed, taking his pocket-watch out and counting slowly. Arthur was an hour late...he was a very punctual man, Arthur Wellesley...either something was wrong, or he'd just been killed again. Of course, that meant their papers were gone too...
With a sigh, the Corsican grabbed his cloak and pulled on his boots before he headed out in the nighttime mist the Thames put over the riverside parts of the city. He'd head to the War Office, Arthur wasn't one to detour much either, and he'd either run into him on the way, or he'd find his body, or he'd find him at the War Office, still arguing with stupid bureaucrats until Churchill himself came down to settle it. Napoleon had been an artillery commander in the Revolution, and even he couldn't shout like Arthur Wellesley when his temper was (rather easily, he had to admit...) brought down upon someone too incompetent to do their job well.
Of course, as two friends of Winston Churchill, that did make the arguments easier, with most people...
“Napoleon! A bit early to go searching for me, isn't it? It's only just gone seven!”
He glanced up from the road, and saw not ten feet ahead of him Arthur Wellesley, a stack of papers in his arms. Napoleon glared, and then turned around abruptly.
“Never said I was looking for you, could have been out for a stroll. Now come on, your damned English mist is getting through my cloak.”
He heard Arthur's long strides approaching, and then slow to match his pace. It was rare for the Irishman to be in a truly good mood, especially when coming from the War Office...
“What has your spirits up, besides being back in some form of weather your Irish bones seem bred to deal with?”
Arthur smiled, and handed Napoleon the papers. Curious, he glanced through them, then smiled.
“Their going to do it? Finally? Operation: Avocado?!” he exclaimed, nearly breaking into a flamenco on the spot, as Arthur himself had once done upon hearing good news (actually, had done many times, just it's less notable when a mere soldier does this).
Arthur hesitated, and shook his head.
“Not exactly...maybe they let the Americans name it...it's Operation: Overlord now.”
Napoleon looked at his friend like he was mad.
“But that's like screaming to the Germans 'We're coming, prepare the banana bread!' ”
Arthur shrugged a bit, and they walked onward, finally slipping into their house and storing the stack in the bomb-shelter, where they quickly brought their cold duck and roast chicken dinner.
They worked through the night, and turned their share of the needed paperwork the next morning.

The operation that became known as D-Day throughout the world went off, with hitches that were solved. And the pair worked hard through the rest of the war, before retiring for a lifetime or two on the pay the Second World War gave them.
Not that they didn't meddle. No one likes to see history repeated, especially those who have lived it, and they helped ensure the close alliance between Germany and the Allies after the war, as well as help to keep things civil in the UN as anonymous consultants, especially for France and the UK.
So far, they are proud to say that haven't fought since the First World War, and don't plan on doing so anytime soon.

“Well, what do you suggest?”
“I would suggest, you overly romantic Corsican, that you merely ask her to a night out! Maybe go for drinks! You somehow married Josephine without my help, I don't see why you need me to tell you how to ask a woman out to dinner!”
“You're British, your women are...much more forward and blunt than French-”
“Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
“...Point taken.”
The higher echelons of British society knew who they were, and they got to live in the Duke of Wellington's house. And Arthur was technically a Duke...the Duke. His heirs held the official title, but it was his. And still they lived like they had back in the Peninsular War, on military cots (which were more comfortable than their shad ever been, true), and on cold meat and bread, mostly...and wine.
And they still helped the English fight their wars...well, Arthur did, Napoleon helped him, not the Crown. It was a difference he was always keen to point out. But for now, they helped. And they worked. And they enjoyed their break from war, enjoyed the peace. And secretly looked forward to the war. Because teaching wasn't all it was cracked up to be...and neither was immortality, come to think of it...
“Arthur...did we make the right choice, becoming immortal?”
“You ask me this every decade, you know? I get really sick of answering it.”
“Well, who else am I going to ask? Plato?”